MEMS-in-mobile market to reach $1.5bn

LONDON – The market for MEMS sensor and MEMS audio devices in smartphones and tablet computers will be worth $1.5 billion in 2016, according to market research company ABI Research.

"The MEMS market is going through a transition period, as many other semiconductor market segments have when approaching maturity," said Peter Cooney, practice director for semiconductors, at ABI. "Leading vendors understand that to be successful in consumer electronics markets, you have to have economies of scale and be able to supply a broad range of solutions."

This is driving a race to increase range and economies of scale which in turn is driving merger and acquisition activity in the MEMS market. Over the next few years the number of MEMS vendors will decrease as larger suppliers acquire others, ABI said.

The largest vendors of MEMS include STMicroelectronics, Bosch, Texas Instruments and Freescale while the market includes a long tail of smaller specialist MEMS suppliers including VTI, InvenSense, and Memstech, ABI observed.

@Peter Clarke: some how the numbers you cite above and the ones by iSuppli don't correlate. For instance, iSuppli is forecasting MEMS growth in consumer & mobile opportunity at ~$4.5B by 2015. If you take out mobile & tablets, there is $3B opportunity in the 'consumer' products? I wonder what are these consumer products that are poised to grow so much with MEMS in them... I know auto's use many sensors but not all of them are MEMS-technology based.
Thoughts?
MP Divakar

@Peter Clarke: see also my comments under your colleague's article on the same topic:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4227904/MEMS-chips-entering-mass-consumer-markets?cid=NL_EETimesDaily
MP Divakar